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him and fire that person. The chief can be heard telling his employee (who he believes is the one who reported him to the board) that, “I just have to wake up and decide that I don’t want them working for me anymore.
“If it’s a mutiny thing, I’m going full in, but I want to talk to each one of you guys and just give you the opportunity. That’s my question. Are you involved in it? Do you know anything about it?”
If you want to read the full story, visit (https://bit.ly/3dZynBH)
When I asked for a copy of the taxpayer-funded investigation into the chief, I was denied it during a public meeting as it became an agenda item. This happened two more times within the following three weeks. During one meeting, while looking directly at me, one board member said, “I wouldn’t mind being sued by the media” to force the release of the investigation results.
During this time, a woman came forward during a public meeting and accused a firefighter – part of the group that came forward with the initial allegations against the chief – of sexual harassment. That firefighter then came forward with documentation that stated he didn’t sexually harass the woman; he said it was consensual. It was later determined by an
outside investigator – the same investigator for the fire chief case -- that the contact was consensual and amounted to a false allegation. At about this time, the fire board began infighting. They were split on the release of the investigation. Two pleaded for the chairman to release it and two (including the chairman) were against it.
This is when I discovered the board was missing a mandatory fifth person. They had not filled the position for more than two years when, according to state law, they had 60 days to do so after the initial resignation. In essence, the board had been operating illegally on matters for two-plus years, which created a host of new legal issues.
Board members began turning on each other, voting each other off the board for unverified misconduct. When it was all said and done, only two board members were left: the chairman and a board member.
At this time, the county stepped in and hired a consultant to take over the board’s operations as an administrator. His first action was to dismiss the remaining members of the board. He then released the results of the taxpayer-funded investigation (after repeated requests and columns about it when the previous board was seated).
He apologized to me and said it should have been given to me much earlier.
I filed my first FOIA on Jan. 25, 2018; I didn’t get the report until the end of March 2018.
In short, the administrator fired the fire chief for misconduct on the job (which also included having an affair with another firefighter while on an official assignment) and theft of firefighting property while on those assignments.
The ironic twist to the entire story, I learned at the end, was the administrator who fired the chief was the one who initially hired him eight years prior to replace the previous corrupt fire chief.
A good summary – my last story of this series – is at https://bit.ly/2ybIQL3.